


Unconvincing Cover Stories

by stargatefan_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Humor, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-18
Updated: 2004-10-18
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10344108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargatefan_archivist/pseuds/stargatefan_archivist
Summary: SPOILERS : multiple, movie through CovenantSUMMARY : an outsider’s POV





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Yuma, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Stargatefan.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Stargatefan.com). To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [StargateFan Archive Collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/StargateFan_Archive_Collection).

Stargate SG-1 FanFiction - Unconvincing Cover Stories

I first met Daniel Jackson when he stole the coffee pot right out of my hand at the U of C library. I didn't even protest, a grad student working on his first master's has no standing compared to the post-docs. He was Dr. Jordan's fair-haired boy, so I just started a new pot and went back to my study carrel. I continued to run into him off and on throughout the year, we got to be friendly if not quite friends, and I'll always be grateful to him for suggesting a few esoteric references that saved me from making a fool of myself in front of my thesis committee. 

Just for the record, I never once heard him say anything about aliens. It was Steven Rayner's snide little remarks that gave the impression he was thinking that way, and it was Sarah Gardner who made sure the whole department got all the details of Daniel's nutty grandpa's alien story. After Daniel disappeared the first time I tracked down the transcripts of his infamous last lecture, and again it was someone in the audience who brought up aliens. I didn't blink when rumors began circulating that he'd died; speculation was even that it could have been suicide. 

By the time Lisa got her predator cats certification (large-animal vets are more specialized than you might think) and a job offer at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, I'd realized I didn't have the passion (or quite frankly, the talent) to make my way through the cut-throat politics of archaeology... so I quite happily got a Colorado Real Estate license and we set up house in Colorado Springs. 

My first job was at a rentals agency; I was pleased to see Daniel again when he came in looking for an apartment. He'd left archaeology as well, and fallen back on his language skills to earn a living. He's working at NORAD now, a translator attached to a deep-space radar telemetry unit. I suppose it makes sense -- Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Arabic cover pretty much every non English speaking observatory in the world. We had him over to the house a few times for dinner, he had us up to his place, and Lisa and I were happy to water the plants and feed the fish when he traveled. 

His new work friends seemed like nice people too. Daniel would always bring one with him when he came over, it helped to dissuade Lisa from playing matchmaker. They were more fun than you'd expect for astronomers, and definitely far better friends to him than Steven and Sarah had ever been. Then one day I go by to tend the fish and there's a moving truck, his team is packing up his stuff and they tell me he's dead. They were clearly crushed at the loss, and I think they honestly regretted they couldn't give me the details. 

Jack apologized for not inviting us to the wake, it was only for people from their office, but we had our own little remembrance. Jack and I shared a love of the Blackhawks, we once spent an entire barbecue trying to convince Daniel that hockey fans were a subculture worthy of anthropological analysis. He didn't quite buy into the premise, but he did allow as how Cubs fans would make a fine subject for a philosophy paper, a case study in the resilience of optimism against all evidence. Sam talked about the stellar drift computer program she'd done up so Daniel could star-date various ancient myths, I think at one point they were planning to publish. He'd really gotten her excited about the topic, they talked about Egyptian and Norse gods as if they were real people. 

I'd almost adjusted to the shock when a few weeks later, a mutual friend on a dig in Mexico told me they'd sent their finds to Dr. Jackson in Colorado, apparently not so dead after all. Daniel called me shortly after that, brushed off my questions with a vague  "missing presumed dead" story. He seemed somewhat embarrassed about the whole thing, wanted to gloss it over quickly, so I found him another apartment and life returned to normal. 

I bought into his explanation of the two bright explosions that had the internet buzzing; a pair of meteors he said, the NORAD folks had told him how incredibly rare it was for them to collide like that. The astronomers were having a field day, but they were trying to keep it quiet to avoid panic. I learned not to make a fuss about the times he returned from his travels with his arm in a sling, or his face bruised and scraped. When I spotted him wandering downtown with some homeless guy and he acted like he didn't know me, I played along. Sunburns, sandburns, frostbite, all none of my business. I didn't question why he was gone for weeks at a time, once even for three months, and returned on crutches. 

Then there was another meteor; this one landed in the middle of the Pacific. Three meteors in two years? I didn't think that was normal. Daniel had become even more secretive, so I didn't push. And when he came to dinner now, he didn't bring his work friends anymore. At Dr. Jordan's funeral he was a little distracted, and Steven and Sarah were as pissy as ever, so I made myself scarce after the service. It was weeks before I found out that a museum curator also died, and a lab technician, and Sarah Gardner was gone, too. I still watered the plants and fed the fish, but I was beginning to feel awkward about it. The dinner invitations became less frequent. 

Less than a year later, there was yet another meteor -- apparently on a collision course with Earth, then suddenly not, no explanation given. And a few weeks later his team showed up to clean out his apartment again... dead, they said, they were certain this time. They looked so sad, I believe their grief was genuine, and I surely don't understand the anger when they told me there'd be no memorial service or wake. I had nobody to not ask when four months later still another meteor landed in the ocean. Imagine my surprise when Daniel comes through the real estate office again eight months after that, this time to buy a house. 

That was almost a year ago, and I've stopped asking, even thinking, questions. We no longer socialize in our homes, although I still run into him sometimes at the supermarket. I smile politely, we make inconsequential chit-chat, but  "what've you been up to?" no longer passes my lips. It's not that I don't want to know, it's just... well, yeah, it is that I don't want to know. I've got a ten-month old son, and twin girls due any day now, I have enough mysteries in my life. 

I don't want to know about the explosion and fire and gun battle in front of his house (of course I heard about it, I took the listings for three families who don't want to live on that block anymore). I don't want to know how it is that Sarah Gardner also turns out to be not quite so dead. I for sure don't want to know about the big meteor shower last spring that destroyed all those satellites, power grids and broadcast terminals, not to mention the carrier group. Astonishing precision for random space rocks, wouldn't you say? I don't wonder that Alec Coulson's press conference was followed in short order by Brian Vogel's death, Alec Coulson's disappearance, and now their company's gone into federal receivership. I really, really, just don't want to know. 

But Lisa and I bought 10 acres in the middle of nowhere and stocked it with a two-year supply of canned and freeze-dried and water purification tabs, plus more seeds and batteries and ammo than your average right-wing militia. We've got a hard-copy library of wilderness survival, advanced first aid, farming, weaving, I even know how to make candles. We're learning to forage and preserve and trap and hunt and skin and smoke every edible thing within four-hundred miles. We keep the Hummer gassed up, the go-bags are stored in the garage. 

And every time the tigers get twitchy we wonder if today's the day. 

**The End**

  


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> Answer to the Cover Stories challenge at SG1TeaRoom

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> October 3, 2004 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp.  
> The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters  
> who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names,   
> titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.   
> 

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